Rutherford's one of my favorite television actresses. I even watched Threat Matrix for her!

Yay, Kelly Rutherford! I've always liked her, and it's cool she gets the hottest guy on the show. I thought she managed to make Serena's snotty and annoying mother not quite as snotty or annoying, and that was certainly welcome.

Until I read this thread, I would have bet money that Kelly Rowan was playing Lily. Doh!

Rutherford and Rowan look so much alike, it's scary! Anyways, I'm intrigued as to what Lily and Rufus's past involves. It seems that those are the 2 adults we will be seeing the most on the show..

It's interesting to note that both Kelly Rutherford and Florencia Lozano have each had experience with soaps...I still remember watching Kelly in Generations (anyone else remember that soap?) as well as Homefront where she got to work with a very young Kyle Chandler. Now she gets to work with Matthew Settle...she has all the luck, doesn't she? I too have always liked her and hope the parents get some decent storylines along with the kids.

And not that there's anything wrong with a soap background...hey, even Nathan Fillion went back to OLTL recently and isn't embarrassed by his soap past! But since Gossip Girl is essentially a soap, it doesn't hurt for the parents to have soap cred!

I'm curious as to how and why she knows that Rufus' wife has left him. It isn't as if he's part of the same social circle as Lily. Has she been checking up on him?

Okay, it has been 2 episodes and I am totally falling in like with this character. As a person who has never read the books, I hope that she gets a lot of character development despite the fact that she is "just" the mom of the main character.

IMDB now lists Mom vdW as Darla van der Woodsen. I wonder if this is an official change or someone messed up the Gossip Girl page.

I kinda like her, like seriously.

Oh, yes. Lily is just so wonderful. Best of all, I don't think she's dicking Rufus around. I think she honestly has no idea what she wants and yet, at the same time, she does. LOVE HER.

I liked the fact that they made her a nice person instead of overtly stuck up.

I like the fact that she's now friends with Chuck.:D

I have to wonder what she'd do to Chuck if she ever finds out he tried to rape her daughter.

Oh, wow. Chuck would get a pow pow, no doubt. And a room at the Ostroff Center.

I'm really enjoying KR in this role. I think she does a good job of portraying someone with upper class credentials, but I can also imagine her as the wild child that she once was. I think she could believably seque from a scene where she portrays class and refinement into a scene where she lets her hair down. I'm also enjoying the chemistry she has with Rufus.

I love Lily. Next to Blair, she is my favorite character on the show. My friend and I refer her to as the goddess Lily, because of her put-downs and awesome characterization. I loved her reaction to finding out about her mother's cancer, sad and crying, but still so perfectly poised.

From the Serena thread:


Maybe she has been warming up to Dan, but at least in the beginning she was horrible to Dan. She accused him of spying on her and Bart, makes constant disparging comments, and landing him a spot at the Ivy Week mixer was a favor to her one of her oldest friends and ex-boyfriend. Saying "okay, okay I'm going. Anything to make you stop talking" isn't exactly the picture of grace or class either. Wary or not, it's rude, and even though Dan did not take offense, it doesn't make it right to prejudge him without trying to even get to know the guy or give him a chance. Dan has had to earn every inch that Lily's given him, so I think he's also earned the right to grumble about his treatment when he continues to be civil to her.

I think Dan likes the fact that Lily isn't a push-over. Any respect he garners from her is well-deserved.

My mother told me that she was so hard on my boyfriends because she was a single mother; she had to be the father and mother. She couldn't play the "oh, kids will be kids" role because she also had to display a parental front that was unshakable and on the defense. I think Lily does this as well.

I do agree that Lily is extremely hard on Dan, but I think she feels she needs to make up for her lax parenting and become the disciplinarian neither Serena nor Erik had before. She realized she can't be the 'cool mom' all the time. From now on I expect us to see Lily teetering on the line of friendship/authoritarian.

She is also pretty bitchy when she wants to be, which is one of the things I love about her, but would be hell on someone dating her daughter.

I think it's been difficult for Lily to hit on exactly the right note to take with Dan. That she was originally treating Dan as an extension of his father, with all the baggage and history that implies, and that it took a while for her to see him as a separate person. Her first reaction upon finding him standing at her doorstep was to protect Serena, and the second to take off and let Rufus have it - which was both another way of protecting Serena and, at the same time, I think a sort of transference. She tried to enlist Rufus in her crusade to drive a wedge between the kids; and, in doing so, found that she derived a sort of comfort from being in the presence of "her Dan", even at the same time she's busy railing at him, which enabled her to work through more of the background issues.

Also, it seems that Lily's default setting is motherly by nature, when other things aren't interfering. She seems to have a sincere fondness for Chuck and even Nate, it's only Dan who got the rough side of her tongue. After all, when Dan plaintively tells Vanessa that Lily is "always sparring with [me]", what is that, except the same thing Lily does with Rufus? It's mainly different because Rufus knows the place it's coming from, and so doesn't take it personally. I certainly don't think it's the ideal way for her to treat a teenager, but I can see where the impulse comes from. Hopefully now that Lily has fully accepted Dan she'll speak less abrasively to him.

There is one thing that I don't understand. Was Lily such a bad mother that her son resorted to suicide and her daughter to alcoholism and sex? Did she just realize that she had to change after Eric tried to off himself? Because from what I see Lily is actually a good parent, considering that she looks like she's bonded with her children in the Thanksgiving episode, and that she was willing to overlook that Dan is Rufus' son and let Serena be with who she wants and be herself. I think Lily never wanted Serena to change, and she really doesn't look like someone concerned with what other people think of her.

I have issues with this show, but none of them have anything to do with Lily. She's a terrific character extremely well played by KR. Whereas I can see getting tired of the teen storylines after awhile, I see the Lily/Rufus storyline lasting for quite awhile. I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Agreed. The L/R story line is far more compelling to me than the D/S one. Call me a sap, but last night's interactions between R & L were by far my favorite. L is no Julie Cooper but she'll do nicely as a replacement.

Lily/Rufus is by far the best relationship to me on the show (although this could be because I am old enough to remember the 90s and because my fiance is an ex-rock band member). However, I sort of hope Lily sticks with Bart Bass, because they always make me think of Lily Bart of the Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth. New York society depictions, full circle at last!

Although here's hoping L doesn't die penniless. alone and before her time...

I hope Lily and Rufus still have scenes together even if she's going to marry Bart Bass. Their chemistry (even as friends) is far too good to go to waste. Lily usually succeeds in making the character she's interacting with interesting, except in the case of Bart. He's about as charismatic as a mailbox. Lily deserves better.

This woman needs to decide what the fuck she wants. That's really all I have to say about her.

I think that Lily does know what she wants but something always gets in the way of her achieving it.

She may have fucked up her kids, but I don't think that was intentional. Rufus is an example. First, her mother vehemently opposes them being together, then he had a wife and kids, and now pursuing something with him will just complicate Serena's relationship with Dan.

Despite everything to the contrary, she does love her children, enough to sacrifice 'true love' for them. (I'm sorry, I'm starting to get a little doubtful of Rufus/Lily.)

I don't think it's necessarily a question of her not knowing what she wants either. I think, that because she's such an awesome character on so many levels, a large part of her character is also getting overlooked. Namely, a sizable component of self-loathing. There was really and truly no reason for her to agree to marry Bart if she was so reluctant to do so, except I suspect she thinks another loveless marriage is no more than what she deserves, and that tying herself to another stuffed shirt is the best way to forget that she gave up Rufus, which equals freedom for her. Obviously, that longing and thirst for freedom keeps popping up despite her best intentions, you don't make your way through 4 husbands before the age of 40 without being on a constant quest for something, but I think she thinks it will keep the wolves at bay a while longer.

QueenAnne: Major WORD. As amazing and as awesome as Lily is, she is probably very lonely. Cece doesn't seem to have been a particular warm mother, and if anything, incredibly manipulative towards Lily. She has been on a quest. She use to do that as a groupie of rock stars and now for the "perfect, rich" husband. She is chose to accept Bart because this is something she knows. Being alone and facing herself genuinely scares her. I think this can also relate to her hiding Eric when he tried to commit suicide. Doubtlessly, he was not the only one who seemed to have felt a bit cramped in that hotel suite. I could guess it catalyzed her relationship with its owner.

I have been thinking about Lily’s relationships…And am kind of surprised at how little we actually know about them….

In terms of Lily and Rufus, we know:
1) She was a groupie, he was in a band.
2) She was his first love and evidently she found him charming.
3) She left him for what I think we can safely assume was a rich guy of which her mother approved.
4) At this time Alison was around enough to know and dislike Lily.

So the thing is, I’m no longer convinced that the relationship was as serious as I have been assuming – particularly on Lily’s side.

I think Rufus fell for her and fell hard, but that Lily didn’t take it that seriously. She was 20 and rebelling against her upbringing. Lily’s comment about not wanting their relationship to be a retrospective on the “way we were” suggests that the way they were was at the very least, not an ‘adult’ relationship.

And then, why has Lily been divorced so often?
She is intelligent, good with kid stuff, caring and all that good stuff, so what keeps going wrong?
For someone who seems so scared of not being in a relationship and is willing to give up great deals to maintain financial comfort of herself and her children, it seems weird that she would almost pathologically repeat these patterns. At this point, on top of her own family resources, she has to have enough money in settlements alone to pay for her lifestyle for a very long time – why continue to chose the UES world where she feels trapped?

Is it that she is attracted to people who ultimately cheat on her? Maybe she uses other’s people’s infidelities as a distancing mechanism? Perhaps she is afraid to cut free of the privileged world she grew-up in, but also afraid to lose her ‘true’ self if she becomes too emotionally involved in that world.

I agree that Rufus views his and Lily's relationship far more serious that it actually was.

You make some good points, but I think their characterization of Lily was fluid, to put it kindly. The rewatch of "Poison Ivy" has Serena asking Lily if she has a single maternal bone in her body, which echoes her question along the same lines in the pilot. I have a hunch they "warmed her up" far quicker than they intended to when they saw how good Kelly's chemistry was with all the younger generation, but I don't doubt Serena's reaction was a true picture of pre-Ostroff Center Lily (i.e. a heck of a lot colder).

As for the "forever marrying upward" question, I haven't been able to come up with any storyline-satisfactory impressions of my own so far, but I'm kind of chalking that up to similar (IMO, poorly-thought-out) quirks, like having Chuck with a full set of parents in the pilot. Or the silly attempts to construct a backstory in "The Wild Brunch" wherein it was completely plausible to Lily that she be having a rational discussion with Bart, while he appears to argue that it is necessary for him to let his army of shopgirls and models who serve as arm candy "down easy" before he can have a full-fledged relationship with her - and then have Bart telling Chuck "Lily wants to play this out a certain way". Which I also found confusing, as everything indicated it was Bart controlling the timetable until he randomly up and told Chuck Lily was in the driver's seat. I wondered if maybe they intended that the V de W's remodeling of the family manse was all for show and that Lily actually needed the money, but then they kinda let the Archibalds have the Jimmy Cooper plotline, so probably not.

As for the Rufus question, it's tough to tell since Lily is so emotionally closed off. We probably won't get a clearer picture of how Young Lily felt until the topic comes up between her and Serena. She came close to airing her retrospective feelings to Dan in "Hi, Society", but I think Serena will get "the girly answer", if she ever gets around to asking.

I think the swticheroo between Bart's harem of women and Lily controlling the reins in their relationship came in "The Handmaiden's Tale" when he saw her kissing Rufus and realized *gasp* what it would be like to lose her. It really did seem like they were planning on having her come from the same background as Rufus in the pilot and then simply leaving him behind in the dust. Which is why I was so by both the "little ranch in Montesito" and her high society mother showing up to inform us Lily's was a family of awesome influence.

I didn't know where else to put this, but the CW Gossip Girl blog just linked Lily and Bart's website that "Lily" made. It's rather cute, and I don't know how canon it is, but there's a blog and we found out Lily did not have a bachelorette party, Bart owns or partly owns fifty hotels, and she writes that Chuck "is a great source of energy". Awww.

OMG this is too cute!


She is so the type to put a "hehe" at the end of a sentence.



Glad she can make fun of herself.:D

Aw, Chuck is one of her boys. Awwww.



You can practically hear the sarcasm.

OK. THIS is awesome. Lily is so my favorite woman in the universe.

Does anyone else get really distracted when they see Lily's hair? She's lovely, but I feel like she would be that much lovelier if she parted her hair on the side. Ugh. It's just a nitpick but it totally distracts me every time she's on screen.

I know it would be tacky to have Lily fight Allison in a "Dynasty"-like catfight but seeing this old clip of Kelly Rutherford from one of my favorite shows as a kid, The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.(1993-94) makes me really think it would be all kinds of awesome! I mean, if she can hold her own against the formidable "Miss Parker" from The Pretender, she can take that skinny hag!

So any theories on what was inside the envelope Bart gave her? It must be pretty damaging considering her reaction, but what could be that damaging? I for one sincerely hope it's not a Rufus/Lily lovechild. It just gives Rufus more reason to act like a judgmental douche.

I thought it was some scandal about Serena and Eric's dad, maybe.

I hadn't seen a single episode of this show until this season and just finished season 1, but Lily is my absolute favorite character (with the exception of Blair). There are so many layers to this character and KR plays them to perfection.

Her relationship with Rufus still has me so confused. Does she love him or did she ever? He seems to be her go-to guy whenever she needs something and that tells me that deep down there is still something there, she just doesn't know what to do with it. I love their scenes and can't wait to see what the writers do with them.


I really, really hope that that isn't it either. It'll throw a huge (unnecessary) wrench into that storyline. What's odd about the whole thing is right before he gave her the envelope, she was very confident in that fact she had done nothing to be ashamed of. She was at peace with her past and wanted her kids to know her, and then BAM. The whole thing is a little weird to me.

There pictures of Kelly at this site. I don't remember seeing them before. Maybe it's a recent shoot?

I don't understand why Lily, for eight episodes, hid the fact that she knew Rufus Humphrey. It would make sense if she wanted to keep it secret from Alison, but Alison already knew.

Serena and her developing relationship with Dan?

Lily might not have championed Dan (back then), but I do think she was quite aware of how disturbing the revelation "and BTW, Dan's family and ours go way back" would have been to Serena (and that this piece of information might have been the premature end of D/S, at that early stage of their aquaintance). And she didn't really want that either.

Kelly Rutherford is pregnant! Wonder how (or whether) they'll work that into Lily's storyline.

Us Magazine

She also may have thought, knowing Serena's old ways, that the thing with Dan may not have lasted. (Though, she should have known better, considering her own penchant for The Humphrey.)



I wonder too! I'm finding it hard to picture her having either one of Rufus's baby or Bart's baby at this stage. If it must be one of theirs, I hope it's Bart's. But maybe Lily will disappear for a while? Pull a pre-S1 Serena?

I hope they don't include her pregnancy in the plot. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind babies, but every time a show added babies/children to the cast and story line it was a jump the shark moment, because it's such a desperate measure to save a show that is tanking.

Don't want GG to get that desperation vibe.

Stephenie Savage said they would write around the pregnancy.

http://spoilertv.blogspot.com/2008/12/goss...t-creators.html

Anybody else think it was a bit out of character of Lily to not want the truth to come out?

I know and agree with the timing sucking, but I figured she would consider this to be a minor consequence of this whole mess and embrace being honest about this secret.

Wonder when this secret is going to be revealed to us too. I've been thinking of what it could possibly be that she was willing to pay whatever price to keep it hidden.

I think I may be the only GG viewer that favored Bart over Lily in their short marriage. So he hired a detective to look into her past? Pfft. It's not like she didn't keep a shit load of secrets from her husband. lol. ;-) I'm only half kidding. I'm not condoning Bart spying on Lily. However even with the detective, I still felt like Bart loved, was more committed to, and worked harder at his marriage to Lily than she to him. As I said before, she was pretty secretive with Bart (from Eric's stay at the mental hospital to her child with Rufus). Plus Lily basically kept another guy on the backburner throughout their relationship (Rufus), even going so far as to sleep with that guy immediately before walking down the aisle with Bart. Hell, Bart knew Lily was involved with Rufus during their engagement but was still willing to forgive her (i.e., the scene where he took Lily to his first apartment building and asked her if she was willing to give up something she loved when she was young too.) Anyway, I felt bad for the guy. I was kind of touched by his attempts to become close with Serena and Eric. (Remember Bart's Christmas gift to Eric of a Florida Marlin's t-shirt? I hated how the three van der Woodsen's gave each other these little "knowing" looks while Bart acted all clueless.) Now the man's dead and his "beloved" wife seems more interested in keeping her secret than mourning her husband. In fact the only person that seems to give a shit is the one person I think Bart treated rather shabbily - Chuck. Pfft.
In general I tend to really like Lily. But I think she pretty much used Bart.